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Phylogeny and cultural history in ontogeny

Michael Cole *

Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0092, United States

Abstract

This purpose of this paper is to defend the contention that human culture is constitutive of human psychological processes. Severalkinds of evidence are presented in support of this proposition: phenomena associated with the stabilization of images on the retina andtheir selective disappearance and reappearance when varying degrees of destabilization are introduced; the non-linearity of cultural/cog-nitive time which acts as a transformative mechanism uniting the material and ideal aspects of culture; data on the operation of culture asa non-linear source of structuration in human ontogeny, and finally, data on the ways in which cultural practices influence the function-ing of the brain.� 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Culture; Phylogeny; Prolepsis; Bio-cultural co-construction

1. Introduction

It is my belief that contemporary study of the role of cul-ture in human development is hampered by the continuedfailure of behavioral scientists to take seriously the implica-tions of the co-evolution of phylogenetic and cultural–his-torical change in shaping processes of developmentalchange during ontogeny. The wide acceptance by psychol-ogists and neuroscientists of the central importance of bio-logical evolution in shaping human characteristics has, Ibelieve, created a situation in which the role of culture inthe process of creating human natures is considered so sec-ondary that it can be easily dismissed. Culture, in this view,is little more than a patina of noise obscuring an otherwiseclear picture of the mechanisms of human thought, feeling,and action. This view was expressed colorfully many yearsago by Gesell (1945, p. 358) when he declared that ‘‘Neitherphysical nor cultural environment contains any architec-tonic arrangements like the mechanisms of growth. Cultureaccumulates, it does not grow. The glove goes on the hand;the hand determines the glove.”

A quite different view was offered by the anthropologist,Geertz, who, while not denying the centrality of biologicalevolution to the emergence of Homo sapiens, made the casefor the critical importance of culture in that evolutionaryprocess in equally colorful language:

Man’s nervous system does not merely enable him toacquire culture, it positively demands that he do so if it isgoing to function at all. Rather than culture acting onlyto supplement, develop, and extend organically basedcapacities logically and genetically prior to it, it would seemto be ingredient to those capacities themselves. A culture-less human being would probably turn out to be not anintrinsically talented, though unfulfilled ape, but a whollymindless and consequently unworkable monstrosity(1973, p. 67–68).

Of course, Geertz was arguing from scanty data, butcontemporary studies of hominization in which culturehas been shown to be ‘‘ingredient to the process” combinedwith experimental evidence demonstrating changes in brainstructure and functioning associated with culturally orga-nized variations in experience have been kinder to Geertzthan Gesell. Thus, for example, evolutionary psycholo-gist Plotkin (2001) has recently concluded that ‘‘Humanevolution and cultural evolution are two-way streets ofcausal interactions” (p. 93). Based upon contemporary

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Journal of Physiology - Paris 101 (2007) 236–246


neuroscientific evidence, Quartz and Sejnowski, declarethat culture ‘‘contains part of the developmental programthat works with genes to build the brain that underlies whoyou are” (2002, p. 58). Donald (2001) makes the same pointin slightly different terms: ‘‘Culture actually configures thecomplex symbolic systems needed to support it by engi-neering the functional capture of the brain for epigenesis”

(p. 23). More recently Li (2006) has coined the term‘‘bio-cultural co-constructivism” to characterize this view.

In light of my own predilections and the increasingavailability of relevant date, my goal in the remainder ofthis paper is to make the case for the inter-twining of phy-logeny and culture in human mental life implied by theselatter authors. In doing so, I will draw upon a variety ofdata, some of which they did not consider.

2. Culture: what are we talking about?

The polysemy of the term culture, even within the disci-pline of anthropology for which it is foundational, is leg-endary. So, recognizing that there is unlikely to be closeagreement, the best I can do is to mark distinctions alonga spectrum of definitions that is important to keep in mindin the current discussion.

Perhaps the most ubiquitous definition of ‘‘culture” wasoffered by the anthropologists, Kroeber and Kluckhohnafter surveying a great many definitions in the then-extantliterature:

Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of andfor behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, consti-tuting the distinctive achievements of human groups,including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential coreof culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derivedand selected) ideas and especially their attached values; cul-tural systems may on the one hand be considered as prod-ucts of action, on the other as conditioning elements offurther action (1952, p. 181).

This definition is useful in the present context because itindexes a critical distinction that to some degree lurks in allother definitions, but often in hidden form, and it needs tobe brought into clear view. Culture, in this definition, ismixture of elements – both material things ‘‘out there inthe world,” and mental entities (ideas and values), thatare presumably ‘‘in here,” in the human mind. Moreoverthe form of those mental entities is specified as symbols,by which is usually meant a representational token for aconcept or quantity; i.e. an idea, object, concept, quality,etc. Just how the material and ideal/symbolic aspects ofculture are related to each other and the relation of cultureto human cognition remains a topic of deep dispute (seeD’Andrade, 2001).

By contrast, recent interest in the possibility that manyprimate groups appear to ‘‘have culture” has resulted inan agreement among primatologists that the core notionof culture is ‘‘group-specific behavior that is acquired, atleast in part, through social influences” (McGrew, 1998,

p. 305) or ‘‘behavioral conformity spread or maintainedby non-genetic means” through processes of social learning(Whiten, 2000, p. 284). By this minimalist definition, cul-ture is not specific to human beings and there is no commit-ment to a central role for symbols in the ‘‘behavioralconformity” observed. Rather, in several prominent cases(e.g., using rocks to break open nuts) the materiality of ele-ments of the behavior involved is most obvious.

For the present, it is sufficient to note that even thosewho argue for the presence of culture among non-humanprimates generally agree that there is more to human cul-ture than non-genetically transmitted behavioral patterns,just as there is more to human cognition than is found innon-human primates. However, disagreements about pre-cisely what this ‘‘more” is and what the differences in thenature of culture among species tell us about the role ofculture in human phylogeny and current cognitive develop-ment have produced a massive and contentious literature(Byrne et al., 2004).

In the materials to follow, I hope to contribute a little tounderstanding this complex relationship.

The paper proceeds as follows. First, I summarize evi-dence from experiments on very short term changes invisual perception under extraordinary circumstances thatappears to require us to acknowledge the role of both cul-turally organized experience and phylogenetically ‘‘hardwiring” in our ordinary perception of the world. At thesame time, these microgenetic data emphasize that phylog-eny and cultural–historical experience, while necessary tonormal perception are not sufficient. Second, I make thecase that in an important sense, cultural–historical time isnon-linear with respect to the ways in which it enters intothe process of human thought quite generally and humanontogeny in particular. This conclusion is buttressed by aselection of empirical examples from children of differentages living in different cultural circumstances. Each of thesecases underlines the complementarity of the material andsymbolic aspects of culture and its mediation of humanexperience. Third, I review recent evidence that normalcognitive development requires us to assume that phylog-eny provides children with ‘‘skeletal”, ‘‘domain specific”

capacities that must be ‘‘fleshed out” through participationin cultural practices for them to develop normally duringontogeny. Fourth, I point to a small, but rapidly expandingcorpus of research indicating that involvement in practiceswhich are of cultural–historical origin may modify both themorphology and on-line functioning of the brain. Withthese data in hand I return briefly to underline my basiccontention that phylogeny and cultural history reciprocallyconstitute each other in the process of human ontogeny.

3. Three parts of an image: a productive metaphor for the

relation of phylogeny and culture in cognition

A provocative way to think about phylogeny–culture–cognition relations among humans is to consider the com-bination of processes that appears to be necessary for an

M. Cole / Journal of Physiology - Paris 101 (2007) 236–246 237


adult human to experience a visual image of the world (thesame processes presumably apply to images in other sen-sory modalities but the relevant data are lacking). Amongother things, the concept of an image shares some of theambiguity found in our discussion of the concept of cul-ture. In English, an image is clearly a noun and it can beinterpreted either as a mental or a material object (I canclose my eyes and create an image of a chair or I can lookat a photographic ‘‘image of a chair”). But this ‘‘thingness”

of images masks the fact that for human beings to experi-ence an image, it requires some kind of process. (Not coin-cidentally, the term, culture, in its early meanings inEnglish also designated a process—the process of makingthings grows). Moreover, a good deal has been knownfor some time about this process with respect to visualimages (Pritchard, 1971; Inhoff and Topolski, 1994).

Briefly, the facts are as follows: our eyes are in constantmotion, not only as a result of voluntary movements of theeyes and the head, but owing to involuntary saccadic eyemovements of 20–200 ms in duration (and even briefer‘‘microsaccades”). Consequently, the eyes move withrespect to a stationary object even if maximal effort is tomade to stare at the object without moving. When visualimages are stabilized on the retina using a special apparatusthat moves in perfect coordination with the retina, thevisual field goes grey, but it does so slowly and the imagesbreak up before they disappears. If there is slight slippage,fragments of the image reappear. However, the full imagereappears only when there is free play of the image acrossthe retina. The physiological mechanism for the total fad-ing of the image is unproblematic: the cells of the retinarespond to changes in luminance so they gradually looseresponsivity when luminance is invariant. However, thisunproblematic fact has some interesting implications. Mostimmediately, it means that discoordination with the worldis constitutive of our perception of it. And it raises thequestion of what goes on between interval of total fixationon an object when information is maximally transmittedand maximal discoordination when no information reachesthe eye from the object?

In seeking to answer this question, some additional factsare important to keep in mind. First, it appears that no use-ful visual information is obtained during the fast, saccadic,eye movement; instead, all the effective information isobtained during the pauses between movements when theeye is fixated on the target (Matin et al., 1972). Second,because there is a (brief) time interval during which, so tospeak, the eye looks away from (discoordinates withrespect to) the object of interest and the time it fixes uponit again, literally speaking, there must be a discontinuity inour perception of the world. However, we experience ourperception of the world as continuous. Because of the pas-sage of time and the fact that, in ordinary circumstancesmovement, however slight, occurs between fixations, whenwe re-fix upon the target object we see it from a differentangle against a different background. Yet we have no con-sciousness of discrepancy.

Second, the fragments into which different kinds ofvisual images break up and disappear and then reappearwhen there is slippage of the apparatus coordinating thevisual image and the retina depend upon the kind of stim-ulus that is presented. Two different classes of images are ofcentral importance to the following discussion (see Fig. 1).

The HB and the female profile share certain characteris-tics such as the sharp changes of luminance at the bordersbetween black and white. However, they differ in that theshape of the human head has been a part of the experienceof Homo sapiens over the entire course of its history, whilethe shape of the monogram is a recent, cultural, conventionassociated with alphabetic literacy.

The common visual mechanisms relating to points ofhigh contrast shared by the two kinds of stimuli are evidentin research with newborn infants. Within days of birth, ifnot at birth, infants are sensitive to the sharp changes inluminance as reflected in their eye movements (Bronson,1997). As shown in Fig. 2, newborns fixate on the apexof the figure where the luminance gradients are mostpronounced.

Fig. 1. The shapes into which the profile of a female head and themonogram, HB disintegrate when they are fixed with respect to themovement of the retina (adapted from Pritchard, 1971).

Fig. 2. Changes in infant fixations on a triangular figure between 2 weeksand 12 weeks of age. The round circle between the two lines of the figureindicated the location of the camera that recorded direction of infant gaze.Note that at 2 weeks the infant fixates almost entirely on the point ofhighest contrast (adapted from Bronson, 1991).

238 M. Cole / Journal of Physiology - Paris 101 (2007) 236–246


The profile and the monogram represent two distinctlydifferent kinds of stimuli with respect to their origins. Inparticular, the face (except for the particular shape of thehairdo and the ribbon) is a kind of stimulus that all humanbeings experience from birth and are an essential part oftheir species makeup while a monogram made of twoalphabetic characters is quintessentially a cultural object.By two days of age, infants are able to recognize theirmother’s faces, but they do so by detecting the distinctivefeatures of her hairline, the point of greatest luminancecontrast (Pascalis et al., 1995). It seems safe to concludethat images of facial profiles, such as that at the top ofFig. 1 are heavily influenced by phylogenetically con-strained mechanisms.

By contrast, the fact that the fragments into which theHB monogram breaks up are all letters of the alphabetor written numbers cannot be attributed to phylogenetichistory except in so far as luminance contrast is involved.Rather, each of the fragments is a meaningful (to literatepersons) cultural unit. The subjects in these experimentshave coordinated their actions through such artificiallyconstructed graphic signs millions of times, achieving avery high level of automaticity. Following Hebb (1949),Pritchard suggests that as a result of such massive experi-ence using graphic symbols they have formed cell assem-blies, a kind of cortical ‘‘firmware” which facilitatesmaintenance and activation of their internal organization.

Following the logic of this line of research on whatmight be termed ‘‘the components of the visual image”

we can conclude that one component is highly specifiedby factors arising from human beings’ phylogenetic historyand one part from the individual’s culturally organizedexperience, which itself is the residue of the cultural historyof the individual’s social group. However, these twosources of experience are not sufficient to provide a coher-ent image of the object before one’s eyes. Rather, itrequires a ‘‘third component,” the active reconciliation orfilling-in by active humans seeking to make sense of theirexperience for an integrated, veridical image of the worldto arise and be maintained.

In addition to its value as a reminder of the tripartitenature of human conscious experience, the stabilized imageexperiment is valuable in underling the fact that the causalrelations between the brain and culture are bi-directionaland that neither constituent of psychological processes issufficient; the active resolving activity of the human beingstriving to make sense of the world is a necessary compo-nent of normal consciousness as well.

4. On the non-linearity of cultural time

A feature of phylogeny–culture–ontogeny relationshipsthat is not clearly evident in experiments on stabilizedimages is that different kinds of temporality that character-izes each of the components. Of course, it is to be taken forgranted that phylogenetic history is of enormously greaterduration, and in this sense, provides a far greater influence

in the organization of psychological processes than cul-tural–historical or ontogenetic history (although we mustalso keep in mind that fact that for millions of years cul-tural-history has been intertwined with the phylogeneticorganization of the brain).

Rather than focus on issues of phylogeny–culture rela-tions in the process of hominization (see, Cole, 2006 for areview of this literature) I wish here to emphasize a featureof culture–ontogeny relations that directs our attention tothe relation between the material and symbolic aspects ofculture and that derives from what I refer to here as the‘‘non-linearity of cultural time.” This non-linearity, Ibelieve, is central to the ways in which the cultural organi-zation of experience provides constraints that underpin theprocess by which culturally organized experience in ontog-eny comes to change brain morphology and function.

4.1. Causation ‘‘from the future”: prolepsis

The most convincing illustration of what I mean by thenon-linearity of cultural time with respect to human ontog-eny is visible in the interactions that take place at the birthof a child. In this first encounter between generations par-ents make visible how the cultural past greets the newbornas its cultural future; the palpable constraints in place inadulthood are transformed into palpable constraints atbirth and ‘‘future structure from the past” is transformedinto constraints on the process of organism–environmentinteraction at birth. The name of the cultural mechanismthat brings ‘‘the end into the beginning” is prolepsis, mean-ing ‘‘the representation of a future act or development asbeing presently existing” (Webster’s Dictionary).

This illustration comes from transcripts collected by theBritish pediatrician, Mac Farlane (1977) who tape recordedthe conversations that took place between parents at theirchildren’s birth. He found that the parents almost immedi-ately start to talk about and to the child. Their commentsarise in part from phylogenetically determined features (theanatomical differences between males and females) and inpart from cultural features they have encountered in theirown lives (including what they know to be typical of boysand girls). Typical comments include ‘‘I shall be worried todeath when she’s eighteen” or ‘‘It can’t play rugby” (said ofgirls).

Putting aside our negative response to the sexism inthese remarks, we see that the adults interpret the phyloge-netic–biological characteristics of the child in terms of theirown past (cultural) experience. In the experience of Englishmen and women living in the mid-20th century, it could beconsidered ‘‘common knowledge” that girls do not playrugby and that when they enter adolescence they will bethe object of boys’ sexual attention, putting them at variouskinds of risk. Using this information derived from theircultural past and assuming cultural continuity (e.g., thatthe world will be very much for their daughter as it hasbeen for them) parents project a probable future for thechild.



This process is depicted in Fig. 3. The horizontal linesrepresent the different ‘‘genetic domains” or ‘‘streams ofhistory” that are simultaneously operative at the momentof birth, which is indicated by the vertical line. The figureshould be read using the numbers associated with eachcurved arrow: by following the arrows from themother ? (remembered) cultural past of themother ? (imagined) cultural future of the baby ? presentadult treatment of the baby.

Two features of this system of transformations areessential to understand the contribution of culture inconstituting development. First, and most obviously, wesee an example of prolepsis. The parents represent andenact the future in the present. Secondly, if less obvi-ously, the parents’ (purely ideal) recall of their pastand imagination of their child’s future, becomes a funda-mental materialized constraint on the child’s life experi-ences in the present. This rather abstract, non-linearprocess of transformation is what gives rise to the well-known phenomenon that even adults totally ignorantof the real gender of a newborn will treat the baby quite

differently depending upon its symbolic/cultural ‘‘gen-der”. Adults literally create different material forms ofinteraction based on conceptions of the world providedby their cultural experience. For example, they bounce‘‘boy” infants (those wearing blue diapers) and attribute‘‘manly” virtues to them while they treat ‘‘girl” infants(those wearing pink diapers) in a gentle manner andattribute beauty and sweet temperaments to them (Rubinet al., 1974). (The assumption of cultural stability, ofcourse, is wrong whenever there are conditions of cul-tural change following the birth of the child. The inven-tion of new ways to exploit energy or new media ofrepresentation, or simple changes in custom, may suffi-ciently disrupt the existing cultural order to be a sourceof significant developmental discontinuity. As but a sin-gle example, in the 1950s American parents who assumedthat their daughter would not be a soccer player at theage of 16 would have been correct, but in 1990 manyAmerican girls play soccer.)

This example also motivates the special emphasis placedon the social origins of higher psychological functions bycultural–historical psychologists (Cole, 1988; Rogoff,2003; Valsiner, 1988; Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1985).Humans are social in a sense that is different from thesociability of other species. Only a culture-using humanbeing can ‘‘reach into” the cultural past, project it intothe future, and then ‘‘carry” that conceptual future ‘‘back”

into the present to create the socio-cultural environment ofthe newcomer.

I believe the process illustrated by Mac Farlane to beuniversal but I know of no recordings equivalent to MacFarlane’s from other cultures. However, an interestingaccount of birthing among the Zinacanteco of South-cen-tral Mexico appears to show the same processes at work.In their summary of developmental research among theZinacanteco, Greenfield et al. (1989) report a man’saccount of his son’s birth at which the son was given threechilies to hold so that it would ...know to buy chili when itgrew up. It was given a billhood, a digging stick, an axe,and a [strip of] palm so that it would learn to weave palm(p. 177).

Baby girls are given an equivalent set of objects associ-ated with adult female status. The future orientation of dif-ferential treatment of the babies is not only present inritual; it is coded in the Zinacantecan saying, ‘‘For in thenewborn baby is the future of our world”.

5. Prolepsis as a ubiquitous feature of ontogenetic experience

To give some flavor of the ways in which the prolepticcultural organization of experience present at birth con-tinues to provide specific patterns of culturally mediatedexperience that shape environmental influences on chil-dren’s experience I will give three examples from some-what later periods of development, both of whichinvolve comparisons of Japanese and American culturalpractices.

Fig. 3. The horizontal lines represent time scales corresponding to thehistory of the physical universe, the history of life on earth (phylogeny),the history of human beings on earth (cultural-historical time), the life ofthe individual (ontogeny), and the history of moment-to-moment livedexperience (microgenesis). The vertical ellipse represents the event of achild’s birth. The distribution of cognition in time is traced sequentiallyinto (1) the mother’s memory of her past, (2) the mother’s imagination ofthe future of the child, and (3) the mother’s subsequent behavior. In thissequence, the ideal aspect of culture is transformed into its material formas the mother and other adults structure the child’s experience to beconsistent with what they imagine to be the child’s future identity.



5.1. The future in the present: the primacy of object and

person orientation in infancy

Bornstein et al. (1990) studied interactions betweenAmerican and Japanese mothers with their 5-month-oldoffspring. The focus of this work was the way that mothersliving in New York and in Tokyo respond to their infants’orientations to events in the environment or to the mothersthemselves. Using a variety of measures of infant behaviors(level of activity, the rate at which they habituate to thesight of their mothers’ faces or objects in the environment,the level of vocalization of various kinds), Bornstein andhis colleagues established the fact that 5-month-old infantsin the two cultures behaved in similar manners and in thisimportant sense, provided similar starting points for theirmothers’ responses to them. Of particular importance inlight of maternal behaviors, infants from the two societiesdisplayed equal levels of orientation to their mothers andto physical objects in the environment.

Despite the fact that these infants represented equiva-lent stimuli in the objective sense provided by theresearchers’ behavioral measurements, there was a dis-tinctive difference in the way that the mothers respondedto their infants. American mothers were more responsivewhen their children oriented to physical objects in theenvironment; Japanese mothers were more responsivewhen their infants oriented to them. Moreover, themothers made overt attempts to change the locus of theirinfants’ orientation when it did not fit their preference;American mothers diverted children’s attention fromthemselves to objects, whereas Japanese mothers showedthe opposite pattern.

Once again we see a pervasive feature of culturalinfluences on development. Japanese maternal behavioris part of a system that highly values a strong depen-dence of the child on the mother whereas Americanmaternal behavior is part of a system that values inde-pendence. These different value orientations make littledifference to the welfare of the children at 5 months ofage; both forms of interaction are caring and supportive.But they are part of a system of constraints on the chil-dren that do make a difference as the child grows older.Bornstein and his colleagues note that as toddlers, Japa-nese and American children do not differ in their globallanguage and play skills. But they do differ in the kindsof language and the kinds of play, they are best at inways that correspond to the differences evident in theirmothers’ behaviors at the age of 5 months. The Japanesepattern of promoting interpersonal over object orienta-tions in early mother–child interactions is also reportedfor a variety of sub-Saharan African societies (Mohantyand Perregaux, 1997).

5.2. The future in the present in early childhood

Three to four year old children provide another clearillustration of how adults bring the future into the present

in shaping children’s experiences and future development.Tobin et al. (1989) conducted a comparative study of pre-school socialization in Hawaii, Japan, and China. Theyrecorded classroom interactions that they then showed toteachers and other audiences in all three countries, to evoketheir interpretations and basic cultural schemata relevantto the preschool child. Only the Japanese and Americandata are discussed here.

When Tobin and his colleagues videotaped a day in thelife of a Japanese preschool, young Hiroki was acting up.He greeted the visitors by exposing his penis and wavingit at them. He initiated fights, disrupted other children’sgames, and made obscene comments. When American pre-school teachers observed the videotape they disapproved ofHiroki’s behavior, his teacher’s handling of it, and manyaspects of life in the Japanese classroom in general. His tea-cher and other Japanese observers had a quite differentinterpretation. Starting first with the overall ambience ofthe classroom, Americans were scandalized by the fact thatthere were 30 preschoolers and only one teacher in theclassroom. How could this be in an affluent country likeJapan? They could not understand why Hiroki was not iso-lated as punishment.

The Japanese had a very different interpretation. First,while teachers acknowledged that it would be very pleasantfor them to have a smaller classroom, they believed itwould be bad for the children, who ‘‘need to have the expe-rience of being in a large group in order to learn to relate tolots of children in lots of kinds of situations” (Tobin et al.,1989, p. 37). When asked about their ideal notion of classsize, the Japanese teachers generally named 15 or more stu-dents per teacher in contrast with the 4–8 preferred byAmerican preschool teachers. When Japanese preschoolteachers observed a tape of an American preschool theyworried for the children. ‘‘A class that size seems kind ofsad and under populated”, one remarked. Another added,‘‘I wonder how you teach a child to become a member of agroup in a class that small” (p. 38).

Members of the two cultures also had very differentinterpretations of the probable reasons for Hiroki’s behav-ior. One American speculated that Hiroki misbehavedbecause he was intellectually gifted and easily becamebored. Not only did the Japanese reject this notion (onthe grounds that speed is not the same as intelligence),but they offered a different interpretation. To them, suchwords as smart and intelligent are almost synonymous withwell behaved and praiseworthy, neither of which apply toHiroki. Hiroki, they believed, had a dependency disorder.Owing to the absence of a mother in the home, he didnot know how to be properly dependent and consequently,how to be sensitive to others and obedient. Isolating Hir-oki, they reasoned, would not help. Rather, he needed tolearn to get along in his group and develop the properunderstanding in that context.

Tobin and his colleagues (1989, p. 24) comment on theJapanese view of their preschool system and Hiroki’sbehavior as follows:



... Japanese teachers and Japanese society place [greatvalue] on equality and the notion that children’s successand failure and their potential to become successful versusfailed adults has more to do with effort and character andthus with what can be learned and taught in school thanwith raw inborn ability.

The Japanese who watched the tape disapproved of thepromotion of individualism that they observed in tapes ofan American classroom, believing that ‘‘A child’s humanityis realized most fully not so much in his ability to be inde-pendent from the group as his ability to cooperate and feelpart of the group” (p. 39). One Japanese school administra-tor added:

For my tastes there is something about the Americanapproach [where children are asked to explain their feelingswhen they misbehave] that is a bit too heavy, too adult like,too severe and controlled for young children (p. 53).

There are many interesting implications to be drawnfrom these observations, only a tiny fraction of whichare touched on here. However, in the present contextmy purpose is to relate them to the situation such childrenwill encounter as adults, in particular the situation thatJapanese boys will face should they pursue a career inthe American pastime of baseball. This point is made ina fascinating account of the fate of American baseballplayers who play in the Japanese major leagues (Whiting,1989). Despite their great skill, experience, and physicalsize, American ballplayers generally have a very difficulttime in Japan. There are many reasons for their difficul-ties, but crucial is a completely different understandingof keys to success in this team sport, a difference that mir-rors differences in preschool education in the two culturesto an amazing degree. The title of the book, You Gotta

Have WA, pinpoints one key difference. WA is the Japa-nese word for group harmony, and, according to Whiting,it is what most clearly differentiates Japanese baseballfrom the American game. Although American ballplayersmaintain that individual initiative and innate ability arethe key ingredients to success, the Japanese emphasizethat ‘‘the individual was nothing without others and thateven the most talented people need constant direction” (p.70). Linked to the emphasis on group harmony is anequivalent emphasis on doryoku, the ability to perseverein the face of adversity as the key to success, whereasAmericans emphasized individual talent. Whiting pointedout that the ideals of WA and doryoku are cornerstonesnot only of Japanese baseball, but of Japanese businessas well:

WA is the motto of large multinational corporations, likeHitachi, while Sumimoto, Toshiba, and other leading Jap-anese firms send junior executives on outdoor retreats,where they meditate and perform spirit-strengthening exer-cises, wearing only loin-cloths and headband with doryokuemblazoned on them (p. 74).

Despite their acknowledged talent, American players,whose understanding of the sources of success, the cultiva-tion of which can clearly be seen in their preschool educa-tion, are generally unable to submit to the Japanese way ofdoing things. In a remark that echoes poignantly on theJapanese disapproval of the American emphasis on verbal-izing and valuing personal feelings over group harmony,one American ballplayer who had a long and acrimoniouspublic dispute with his manager was led to ask in despera-tion, ‘‘Don’t you think that’s going too far? What aboutmy feelings? I have my pride you know”. To which themanager replied, ‘‘I understand your feelings, howeverthere are more important things”.

Here again we see how culture operating on young chil-dren creates an effect conditioned not by present necessity,but by deep beliefs about ‘‘how things work” that serves asa conceptual schema for how they treat children in thepresent; cultural differences in behavioral organization inthe present appear to have relatively minor consequencesin the present life of children, but major effects in termsof the long-term organization of their behavior.

5.3. The complementarity of phylogenetic and cultural

constraints in acquiring numeracy

In recent decades a good deal of evidence indicates theexistence elementary numerical abilities involving smallquantities, including counting, addition, and subtractionin both very young human infants and in primates,although there is controversy about the precise processesinvolved (Boysen and Hallberg, 2000; Gelman and Galli-stel, 2004). For example, Gelman and Williams concludethat the pattern of errors evidenced by young infants askedto perform numerical operations on set sizes of three or lessobjects may indicate the presence of a ‘‘common preverbalcounting mechanism similar to the one used in animals”

(1998, p. 588). Hauser and Carey go somewhat further,concluding that:

Early primate evolution (and probably earlier), and earlyin the conceptual history of children, several of the build-ing blocks for a representation of number are firmly inplace. [These include] criteria for individuation andnumerical identity (the sortal object, more specific sortalslike cup and carrot, and quantifiers such as one andanother). Furthermore, there are conceptual abilities. . .such as the capacity to construct one to one correspon-dence and the capacity to represent serial order rela-tions. . . (1998, p. 82).

Studies of numerical reasoning in early childhood indi-cate that it builds upon these early starting conditions inan orderly fashion. Thus, for example, Zur and Gelman(2004) report that when three year olds who had notattended preschool viewed the addition or subtraction ofN objects from a known number and were asked to predictthe answer and then check their prediction, they providedreasonable cardinal values as predictions and accurate



counting procedures to test their predictions. Such rapidlearning in the absence of explicit instruction, they argue,supports the idea that there are ‘‘skeletal mental structuresthat expedite the assimilation and use of domain-relevantknowledge (p. 135)”. Data such as these, despite uncertain-ties about mechanism, support the argument for numberreasoning as a core domain, and hence a phylogeneticallygiven human universal.

Evidence from number development in other cultures,however, appears, at least at first glance, to cast doubton the universality of elementary number reasoning andleaves little doubt that Hatano and Inagaki (2002) are cor-rect in arguing that because innately specified knowledge isstill skeletal it is essential to study the ways in which cul-tural experience interacts with phylogenetic constraints toproduce adult forms of numerical reasoning.

To begin with, there are a good many societies in theworld that appear to have at most a few count words onthe order of ‘‘one, two, many” (Gordon, 2004; Pica et al.,2004). While no research has been conducted with infantsin such societies using procedures comparable to those usedby modularity and core-domain theorists, it is not clearhow such an impoverished system could be considered evi-dence of a universal set of numerical knowledge. Moreover,Gordon (2004) has recently reported that while Pirahaadults living in a remote area of the Amazon jungle displayelementary arithmetic abilities for very small arrays, theirperformance quickly deteriorates with larger numbers. Bycontrast, Piraha children who learn Portuguese numberwords do not display the same limitations as their parents.

This evidence underscores how important cultural influ-ences are for the elaboration of core numerical knowledge.A key factor appears to be the appearance of lexicalizedarithmetic knowledge in association with the appearanceof cultural practices that arise when economic activitiesbegin to produce sufficient surplus to necessitate recordkeeping and trade. Saxe, for example, reported that inthe late 1970s traditional Oksapmin (New Guinea) arith-metic practices appear to have been at the very beginningsof their capacity to support mathematical reasoningbecause, according to Saxe (1981), small amounts weretraded and one-to-one correspondence often sufficed as amechanism to mediate exchange. Twenty five years later,owing to greatly increased involvement in trade and inter-cultural exchange, arithmetic reasoning had become mark-edly more complex (Saxe and Esmonde, 2005).

When we consider the evidence from two West Africansocieties, both of which engaged in agricultural production,the influence of cultural practices on the development ofarithmetic thinking are more pronounced. Jill Posner(1982) compared children from two neighboring groupsin the Ivory Coast. The first she characterized as farmersusing primitive agricultural methods to seek out a subsis-tence living; the second also farmed, but in additionengaged in trades such as tailoring and peddling whichrequired frequent participation in the money economy.The children in both groups displayed knowledge of rela-

tive quantity, a skeletal principle, but the children fromthe subsistence farming group displayed far weaker count-ing skills and calculation skills than those from the groupwith more involvement in the money economy, a differencewhich was compensated for by schooling.

6. From cultural practices to cognitive expertise and changesin brain function

Taken together, each of these lines of research (see Cole,2006, for additional examples) provides strong support forthe complementary roles of phylogenetic and the morerefined coordination of experience in cultural practices asjointly required for the development of a variety of cogni-tive functions. In the final section I seek to bring the storyfull circle by providing examples of how the cultural orga-nization of experience feeds back on phylogenetically pre-scribed brain function. Of the increasing variety of suchexamples becoming available for research (see for example,Baltes et al., 2006) I have chosen two example of culturalpractices. The first involves the use of the abacus in con-temporary Japan because extant research provides a richpicture of both the way in which cultural practices areorganized, their cognitive consequences as measure bystandard experimental procedures, and the consequencesfor brain activity. The second involves the long term behav-ioral capacities and corresponding brain changes associ-ated with the acquisition of literacy in schools in Portugal.

6.1. The organization and consequences of abacus expertise

in Japan

Expertise in abacus operation nicely illustrates howdomain-specific cognitive skills develop when a society cre-ates artifacts and cultural practices to support more com-plex cognitive achievements (Hatano, 1997). An abacus isan external memory and computational device. It can reg-ister a number as a configuration of beads, and one canfind the answer to a given calculation problem, in principle,by manipulating them. It is no longer used widely in day-to-day commercial activity, but the abacus still constitutesa significant aspect of Japanese culture because it survivesas a special artifact, skills for which are valued in circlesof enthusiasts. It survives also as an instructional tool:quite a number of children go to private after-schoolinstruction for abacus, and a few of these become enthusi-asts. To put it differently, abacus operation is embedded intwo kinds of practices, educational and hobby.

People can learn how to operate a (real) abacus in anelementary but serviceable manner in a few hours whenthey participate in deliberate instruction. Advanced train-ing is geared almost entirely to accelerating the speed ofthe operations involved. Values respecting the speed of cal-culation are shared among abacus operators.

As a result of extensive training, abacus operation tendsto be gradually interiorized to such a degree that most aba-cus masters can calculate accurately and even faster with-



out a physical abacus present than with the instrumentitself. During mental calculation, it appears that they canrepresent an intermediate, resultant number on their ‘‘men-tal abacus”, in the form of a mental image of the configu-ration of beads, onto which (mentally) they enter, or fromwhich they remove, the next input number. In other words,abacus experts can solve calculation problems by mentallymanipulating the mental representation of abacus beads.The interiorization of the operation is an important mech-anism for accelerating the speed of calculation, because themental operation is not constrained by the speed of musclemovement. Thus, expert abacus operators use the real aba-cus only when they deal with very large numbers that can-not be represented on their mental abacus.

Some abacus operators calculate extraordinarily rapidly(Hatano, 1997). When mixed addition and subtractionproblems (e.g., 957 + 709, 143 + 386 + 2095 � 810 �91,748 + 105...) are presented in print, experts manipulate5–10 digits per second. Remarkable speed is also observedfor multiplication and division. Experts give, for example,an answer for 3 � 3 or 4 � 2 digit multiplication within5 sec. When they use a real abacus, they are basicallyerror-free. Their mental calculation is not entirely free fromerrors, but their accuracy is quite respectable.

As might be expected, abacus experts’ calculations arehighly automatic. Experienced abacus operators can con-verse during calculation, even without the instrument.The conversation cannot be very demanding – usually justa short and simple factual or preferential question–answerexchange is required. However, this feat is remarkable con-sidering that we generally ask people around us to be quietwhen we calculate, especially when we do so without paperand pencil.

The case of gaining expertise in abacus operation (bothmaterial and mental) exemplifies the socio-cultural natureof expertise (Hatano, 1997). Pupils who attend abacusare usually first sent there by their parents while in elemen-tary school. The parents often believe that the exercise willfoster children’s diligence and punctiliousness as well asenhance their calculation and estimation ability. Youngpupils are motivated to learn abacus skills to get parentalpraise, especially by passing an exam for qualification. Likemany other out-of-school domains of learning in Japan,abacus learning has an elaborated qualification systemand frequent exams. It nicely fits with, or even is encour-aged by, the fact that Japanese culture emphasizes effortrather than ability (Sato et al., 2004).

The students’ motivation changes when they join anabacus club at school or become a representative of theabacus school, in other words, when the operation isembedded in a different kind of practice. Abacus enthusi-asts compete in matches and tournaments, as tennis orchess players do. Also like these players, abacus club mem-bers not only engage in exercise at least a few hours everyday but also seek knowledge of how to improve their skills.Their learning is strongly supported by the immediatesocial context of the club and the larger community of

abacus operators. Formal and informal relationships withan instructor and peers organize their way of life, and sanc-tions from other players regulate their daily activities.Moreover, they may participate in the community of aba-cus operators by taking an administrative role in players’organizations as well as by serving as an examiner or ajudge at matches and tournaments. They participate moreand more fully by assuming more and more significantresponsibilities in the community.

Abacus operators are also socialized in terms of theirvalues, for example, regarding the importance of abacusskills and their status in general education, as well as theirrespect for the speed of calculation mentioned above. Infact, the community of abacus educators and players con-stitutes a strong pressure group in the world of educationin Japan. In this sense, gaining expertise is far from purelycognitive. It is a social process (Lave and Wenger, 1991),and it involves changes in values and identities (Goodnow,1990). The experts’ values and identities are undoubtedlyforms of ‘‘culture in mind”, acquired through internaliza-tion. They serve as the source of motivation for expertsto excel in the target domain.

Expertise in mental abacus operation also induceschanges at neural levels. For example, using event-relatedFMRI, Tanaka et al. (2002) showed that, whereas ordinarypeople retain series of digits in verbal working memory(revealed as increased activation in the corresponding cor-tical areas including the Broca’s area), mental abacusexperts hold them in visuospatial working memory, show-ing activations in bilateral superior frontal sulcus and supe-rior parietal lobule. Hanakawa et al. (2003) demonstrated,using FMRI, that the posterior superior parietal cortex wassignificantly more activated while mental additions wereperformed among mental abacus experts than non-learnersof abacus.

6.2. The later consequences of early literacy acquired in

school

The detailed results concerning the relation of brainfunction to culturally organized (abacus) experiments stillleaves open the question of what long term morphological

changes might be associated with such functional indica-tors of involvement in cultural practices might also beinvolved.

There are several sources of such evidence. Perhaps themost intensive study is that of this problem has been car-ried out by Castro Caldas, Ostrosky, Ardila, theircolleagues, and others (see for example, Ardila et al.,1994; Castro Caldas, 2004; Ostrosky et al., 1986). Thesestudies contrast the brain morphology and functions ofpeople who have or have not been to school with thoseof non-schooled people. Collectively, they have involveda variety of populations ranging from cases in culturalpractices in a Portuguese study where older girls being keptat home while second borns went to school and were testeddecades later, to cross-sectional studies of adults who had



experienced varies of levels of education and come fromdifferent parts of the same country. Their testing methodswere heavily grouped around functions where the impactof cultural practice and plausible brain regions could beidentified, e.g. those mediated by print in some fashion.Their brain measures in FMRI, magnetoencephalography(MEG) and PET scans.

Taken individually, various of these studies could befaulted in terms of the extent to which the comparisongroups not chosen at random, a problem in all such com-parative work (Cole and Means, 1981). Taken as an ensem-ble, they lead Castro Caldas to conclude that it is possibleto identify brain structures that can be identified with thefunctions of reading and writing, both from the functionaland from the anatomical points of view:

Results concerning visual processing, cross-modal opera-tions (audiovisual and visuotactile), and interhemisphericcrossing of information are reported. Studies with magne-toencephalography, with positron emission tomography,and with functional magnetic resonance provided evidencethat the absence of school attendance at the usual ageconstitutes a handicap for the development of certain bio-logical processes that serve behavioral functioning. Differ-ences between groups of literate and illiterate subjectswere found in several areas: while dealing with phonologya complex pattern of brain activation was only present inliterate subjects; the corpus callosum in the segment wherethe parietal lobe fibres cross was thinner in the illiterategroup; the parietal lobe processing of both hemisphereswas different between groups; and the occipital lobe pro-cessed information more slowly in cases that learned toread as adults compared to those that learned at the usualage (2004, p. 7).

7. Conclusion

These findings with respect to linkages between practicesand brain changes fit with the findings of Scribner, Cole,and their colleagues based entirely on a combination ofpsychological and ethnographic methods among the Vai.Their research, which included people who become literatewithout schooling, as well as those who attend school tobecome literate. They concluded that the consequences ofliteracy are cultural-function and context-specific. Theybecome generally on in so far as they are taken up as con-stituents of many practices. This is precisely the conclu-sions to which the research concerning stabilized imagesled us at the beginning of this chapter.

Culture and phylogeny have, as Geertz asserted, beenwound together in the process of hominization ‘‘since thebeginning”. History, in this sense, can become destiny.But only in so far as the non-linear causal weight of culturefails to provide sufficient constraints to demand brain spe-cialization; the co-constitution of culture and biology canno longer be ignored in studies of human learning anddevelopment. The degree of their generality varies directly

with the A group of 64 illiterate normal subjects wasselected in the Mexican Republic. Their performance wascompared with two barely schooled control groups (1–2and 3–4 years of schooling). The subjects’ ages ranged from16 to 85 years. In the second analysis, the illiterate subjectswere further matched by age and sex with individuals with1–4, 5–9, and 10–19 years of formal education. The Span-ish version of the NEUROPSI neuropsychological test bat-tery (Ostrosky et al., 1998) was used. Results indicated asignificant educational effect on most of the tests. Largesteducational effect was noted in constructional abilities(copying of a figure), language (comprehension), phono-logical verbal fluency, and conceptual functions (similari-ties, calculation abilities, and sequences). Aging effect wasnoted in visuoperceptual (visual detection) and memoryscores. In the first subject sample, it was evident that,despite using such limited educational range (from 0 to 4years of formal education), and such a wide age range(from 16 to 85 years), schooling represented a stronger var-iable than age. It is proposed that education effect on neu-ropsychological test performance represents a negativelyaccelerated curve, tending to a plateau.

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